It’s the Sage’s turn to visit the Dark Metropolis tomorrow. He has, as ever, bought timed train tickets to enable to conduct his affairs in the least possible time, and it was only to please me, for I have been too often delayed by public transport, that he allowed an extra half hour which he confidently expects to spend cooling his heels on Liverpool Street Station. I usually work out train times at off-peak rates so that I can spend the most time for the least money, because there’s always another museum or gallery or bookshop to visit, but he is rather less frivolous than I and is rarely side-tracked.

So I will be home alone – for the morning at any rate. There is much to do, but also many distractions.

I made some particularly tasty game soup this evening, which I served with cheese scones. “Cheese scones and cheese? enquired Ro, evidently thinking his mothers exuberance had got some way out of hand. I explained that there was so little cheese in the scones, so that I could explain away to myself the eating of one, that I felt I had shortchanged him and his father, so he forgave me the gastronomic tautology.

I spent a busy hour on Saturday Christmas shopping courtesy of the internet. I am going to Norwich on Wednesday to meet my sister-in-law for lunch and exchange presents, and have a couple of errands to run there. The rest I will buy in Yagnub. I cannot make a fuss about shopping, although I haven’t any idea what to get for the Sage this year. The truth is that he’s impossible to plan to buy for as the things that most of us think of as treats leave him more polite than ecstatic. All manly suggestions assume that every chap is a very large child or one who is fanatical about sport, or possibly alcohol, and the Sage is none of these. He is indifferent to music, reads to gain information and doesn’t care for gadgets. He prefers old things to new, and particularly likes items he has had for years and is used to (he has never become entirely used to me, because I am mercurial and enigmatic, but then he wouldn’t wish to become Dull). Someone complimented him on the suit he was wearing a couple of weeks back – he had had it made more than twenty years ago, which makes it one of his newer items of clothing. It still fits of course, but so does his Old Boys’ Blazer, which, with his Old School Tie still gets hauled out for the occasional reunion, and he bought that back in the fifties. The nineteen fifties, that is.

… I can never remember – is snake eyes good or bad? I think I’ll stick to poker in future. You know where you are with poker.

Anyway, I have. I’ve emailed the Rector offering – offering, no less, such a twerp and a jackass I am – to carry on as churchwarden for another year. No, I don’t know why. That is, I know the reasons and I explained them, but why I had a compulsion to do it right now, or at all without some serious grovelling by various good people, I can’t imagine. You can never say that I play hard to get. Round-heeled isn’t in it.

Anyway, she rang back within minutes – the Rector evidently spends her Sunday evenings, when not conducting a service, at the computer as I do. And said she has been praying that I’d make this decision. Oh thanks. That’s all I needed. An answer to a prayer. No, really, I’m not too good with all this religious stuff, which is probably the reason the deity, whatever it is, and I are on quite good terms. My God is a mildly cynical god, in a most loving and accepting way – actually, I’ve just thought of this, think of Cosi Fan Tutte. Mozart’s clear-sighted knowledge and acceptance of human frailty is … bugger. Sorry. It may be a Sunday but I’m not doing religion for anyone.

Afterwards, I rang the Fellow (on another subject) and told him – and also said that I had yet to break it to the Sage. Who was in the room but, for he is a polite Sage and doesn’t listen to phone calls unless they are his, not really listening. So let me tell him gently, in my own time. After all, the Rubicon is crossed and the bridges burned (I’m not sure that the one followed the other, but they sort of fit, if not actually historically) and he will be fine. He may not even notice.

The Sage woke up. “Do you have to be anywhere?” he wondered. “Don’t worry, it’s Saturday,” I murmured, and we wrapped our arms round each other and relaxed dozily for an extra half hour. We heard the papers come, and Al leave for work and chuckled smugly, because we didn’t have to move.

Later, Al came home to fetch another vanful of trees. I biked in to do my shopping. Mark, the friendly butcher, chatted cheerily about the joys of cycling. I looked at him without expression – largely because my face muscles were stunned by cold. I suggested he ask me again about the end of May.

I went and fetched lots of vegetables, plain yoghurt, kidney beans, rice cakes and bought several dozen Christmas cards. It all just fitted in the panniers, but was so heavy that I walked across the road before setting off home in case I wobbled and fell off (even when sober, I’m not all that steady). The rain had started by then and stung my cheeks icily. I was boring and dull enough to weigh the panniers when I arrived home – one was 19lbs and the other 15lbs. It wasn’t something I was aware of when I shopped by car.

The water was high in the dykes as I rode across the dam. Yagnub is, on three sides, hemmed in with water meadows and a system of natural and man-made waterways, which feed the River Waveney. These often flood, but that’s what they are there for. Sometimes, the surrounding fields look like huge lakes dotted with trees, but the water has to go somewhere and it helps to fill the underground natural aquifers which give us our drinking water – we don’t have reservoirs around here, but nor have we ever had a hosepipe ban in this dry area of the country.

Although I was rained on, I was lucky that I arrived home when I did. Since then, it has poured.

The older women in the village are really pleased to see me out on my bike. I greeted three of them on my way in – they had all done their shopping and were on their way back by this time. Millie was fetching her bike as I parked mine. “Glad to see you’ve joined the club!” she said. I was fortunate enough to have a two-year-old child when I came to live here, which was a great help in getting to know people and start a social life. My mother found her entry into the village was in having a dog to walk. From the general air of warm approval and encouragement around me, using a bike is similarly engaging. If only for this, I’m glad I bought it.

My sister, Wink, rang tonight to say that our friend Dodo is in hospital. She is 95 years old, lives alone and hasn’t been managing to look after herself very well for the last couple of weeks. Wink had been going to visit her last week (she lives about 50 miles away) but Dodo rang to put her off – she never says what’s wrong on these occasions, just that she doesn’t really feel up to visitors. She’s never made a fuss and manages very capably normally, but – well, she’s 95 and age is taking its toll.

Dodo was my mother’s oldest friend. When they met, Mummy was 18 and Dodo was 28 and they were friends for over 60 years. She’s Wink’s godmother and they have always been close.

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the death of Wink’s husband Alan.

Love and hugs to you, Winkie darling.

You’ll be happy to know that many people are whingeing at Blogger, not only because their commenting arrangements have been arbitrarily changed but also because we have not been notified by email of the very few comments we now receive, since the commenting arrangements have been arbitrarily changed. I found, last time I checked, that the new ‘anyone can put in their URL and register’ thing has belatedly arrived among my options but, as I’ve pointed out, I don’t expect people to register. I can’t really be arsed with any bother – ‘good enough’ satisfies me (in most respects, there are instances where ‘superb’ is the least that will do, but in no way that need concern you) – but if it is not sorted soon I will switch. To what, I don’t know and don’t care, but Blogger is trying my patience.

There was a Chamber of Trade meeting last night, and there is a move afoot to make the town plastic carrier bag free. This will go down well with Al (from whom the report comes) as he has supplied none for several years, unless returned to him by customers. No problem to me either, with my bicycle panniers, which are remarkably roomy.

We have been talking about presents. I have received most of mine already, and since I am deliriously overjoyed with the least thing, I am very easy to buy for in any case. Ro has ordered his with his credit card on my account and Al wants bee-keeping stuff, but as the sale starts in January he is happy to wait. The rest of us have wishlists set up, except the Sage, who is impossible to buy for because he already has everything he wants, as long as I wrap myself in pretty paper and snuggle under the Christmas tree each year. Squiffany is majoring on bird stuff this year and Pugsley on farm stuff – I need a few more animals – so, as usual, I’m not going to fuss. My goddaughter and her bro will get money. Teenagers need and deserve money, bless them.

Ooh, the comment email thing has just come back on again. Silly tossers. Nothing was wrong until they started bluggering about with it.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Acquired from Dave, thank you. It didn’t give me an opportunity to correct the spelling mistake, but I was amused by the description.

I’m so slow. You know I’ve been meaning to take clarinet lessons again, but have been waiting until I’ve got time to practise a bit so as not to embarrass myself with my ineptitude. I’ve been told of a good teacher, but he’s near Diss, 15 miles away, which is a long way to go. I’ve finally, finally realised it would be a good idea to ask the music teacher at the school for a recommendation. D’oh. Really, d’oh.

Excellent concert, really impressive. The kids are very good and visibly enjoy performing, without putting on any airs at all.

I’ve cracked the two-Christmas-dinners-in-a-day dilemma. I was so abstemious that I actually managed to leave two tables still feeling slightly hungry. I am glad of that, as I will have to do the same thing next week. Why did four societies plan celebratory meals on two days, I wonder?

I said Al and Dilly hadn’t been too well yesterday – they just felt rough, nothing more and the children were fine. I spent two days with the children and I’m fine. Ro has spent the day in bed, except when he was throwing up in the bathroom. It so happened that he was working from home today; except he wasn’t actually doing any work of course. Since stomach upsets, with him, turn into really bad three-day migraines, he has anti-sickness tablets from the doctor and they are, now, working. Poor bloke.

This evening, Dilly and I took the children to the Christingle service at the village church. They both enjoyed it vastly and Squiffany sang enthusiastically through the carols, undeterred by knowing neither words nor tunes. They both gazed spellbound at their lit Christingles, although Pugsley saw no reason not to put his fingers in the flame. I held it high to prevent him.

Tomorrow, it’s the high school concert. I will, I know, be placed in the front row, where it is impossible to insert earplugs without being noticed. I enjoy it, rock band, jazz band, punk band, string quartet and all the rest, but my ears are unused to high volume.

I’m very pleased that Mark Wallinger has won the Turner prize. I wasn’t sure at first if a re-creation of a protest site is an original piece of art in itself, but I was won over, not least because its installation is an important protest and statement against repression in its own right. Thanks to our present anti-democratic government’s Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, the installation itself at Tate Britain, being half inside and half outside the 1 kilometre exclusion area for demonstrations, however peaceful, around Parliament Square, is in part illegal.

I haven’t seen Sleeper, in which he was filmed wandering around, sometimes startling people, dressed in a bear suit, but I think Ecce Homo is the most affecting piece of work that has stood on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Very useful, by the way, to memorise who stands on the other three – hardly anyone knows considering how often the question comes up in quiz programmes.

Ooh, and I was the answer to a question on Mastermind tonight. And I fell asleep again the moment Nigella came on. She’s a marvel, that woman.

I had a phone call from Al this morning, just before 8 o’clock, asking if I could go and open the shop for him as he wasn’t feeling too good. I had offered last night, as both he and Dilly were under the weather then, but I sort of expected an earlier call and was settling down to eat breakfast. As it was, I dried my hair, poked various items of make-up in the general direction of my face, and was out of the house within ten minutes, taking my slice of dry toast with me.

An hour later, the shop was open, produce on the shelves and I was on my way to Norwich. I chatted to various people, drank black coffee, ignored a mince pie, asked the speaker about his credentials (fine ones, but I had to be sure of getting them right), introduced him, listened to a marvellous lecture about La Traviata, thanked him, drank two glasses of mulled wine, chatted to more people, ‘interviewed’ someone interested in coming on the committee, drove home, finished a letter, printed and signed it, ate a small piece of feta cheese and drove to the high school, having been in the house for five minutes.

I chanced upon the person to whom the letter was addressed, so rescued it from the secretary’s office and delivered it in person, then spent the next 50 minutes with the Year 9 music lesson.

I came home and looked at emails. I even opened and read a few of them. Al rang and asked if I could go back to the shop to take over from Tim. He still feels queasy and dizzy, but better than he did. The children are fine.

I have eaten two rice cakes and am drinking tea. I feel empty but not hungry. I shall spend two more hours in the shop, come home, drink more tea, prepare and eat dinner and then start work.

I know you’re all busier than I am, doing much more vital things. I merely fluff around on the surface. I’m not at all sure if I think we’re marvellous, or just plain daft.